Eco-Quartier: A Tale of Dumpster Diving and Stickers

Oh, the jobs people work at!
Out west, near Hawtch-Hawtch,
there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher.
His job is to watch...
is to keep both eyes on the lazy town bee.
A bee that is watched will work harder, you see.

Well...he watched and he watched.
But in spite of his watch,
that bee didn't work any harder. Not mawtch.
So then somebody said,
"Our old bee-watching man
just isn't bee-watching as hard as he can.
He ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher!
The thing that we need
is a Bee-Watch-Watcher!"
WELL...

The Bee-Watch-Watcher watched the Bee-Watcher.
He didn't watch well. So another Hawtch-Hawtcher
had to come in as a Watch-Watcher-Watcher!
And today all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch
are watching on Watch-Watcher-Watchering-Watch,
Watch-Watching the Watcher who's watching that bee.
You're not a Hawtch-Watcher. You're lucky, you see!

I figured in life I was doomed to become a Bee-Watch-Watcher, and maybe if I worked really hard, a Watch-Watcher-Watcher. I assumed that the work I do would be a presumably powerful position, in theory, but realistically I would be insignificant. Katimavik has placed me far away from the Bee-Watchers, I get to be the bee. I get to be there actually doing something. Which is why the time has come for you all to learn the secret of my work placement: Eco-Quartier NDG. I figured I'd take the time to do a blog entirely about my work placement, and just how cool it is.

I have mentioned before my Quebecois counterpart and ultra-cool boss Nikki (two k's) Schiebel. She is an endangered species in Montreal, she's one of the only Anglophones that survived the referendum, and by survived I mean didn't move to Toronto.

Here's an idea of what kind of things I do at work:
-Making posters
-Data entry
-Door to door
-Recycling stickers
-Deliveries
-Compost
-Dumpster diving
-Eco-Crafts
-Class presentations
-Weird tasks

I work in an area called Notre-Dame-De-Grace, or as it is more frequently referred to, N.D.G. This means I wake up at 8:15 every morning, I have my breakfast, make my lunch, and put some tea in a jar. I leave just before 9 and I walk two blocks to Monk metro station clutching my warm jar of tea. I wait for my metro, maybe have a sip of tea. Ride that metro to Lionel-Groulx where everyone likes to reenact the tea party scene from Alice in Wonderland, "Everybody, change places!". Then I get on my new metro heading to Cote-Vertu, and I exit at Vendome. From Vendome I usually take the 9:30 102 Somerled bus, some times I'll take the shorter 9:30 104 Cavendish bus, and if I'm feeling up to it (or I missed the other two) I'll take the 105 Sherbrooke and just walk up a couple blocks when the time is right. I'm usually at work by 9:45-10:00.

There's a lot I've learned at the Eco-Quartier, and more than just what is recyclable and what isn't (and while I'm on that note you all need to start cutting up you pizza boxes, because if they're soiled by grease, they're not recyclable).

I've learned a lot about vermicomposting which is going to be everyone's Christmas gift for 2011. Vermicomposting is an efficient indoor alternative to backyard composting, it doesn't smell, and the worms don't escape. It works faster and you can compost a variety of things, and it creates a source of super earth, a fantastic fertilizer. And yes, mum, there are worms in it. It's like grade 2 all over again, Niki loves worms, why can't you?

Let's not forget the Eco-crafts which are by far the coolest, I got some really cool craft idea for when I get home, if you don't want a vermicomposter maybe you'd prefer a recycled craft? Tissue box picture frame? Bag made from woven milk bags? Little house made out or milk carton? Oh I have too much fun.

Then there's the stickers, which, for most people, would seem like a tiresome repetitive task. Last fall the city ordered a whole bunch of 240L green recycling bins on wheels for houses in NDG. However they never actually stamped them with anything even hinting that they were recycling bins, and not just garbage bins. So with all this confusion the answer was to have recycling symbol sticker ordered from the manufacturer, and then have the stickers put on either side of the bin. This means that the Eco-Quartier is in charge of making sure that the bins get there stickers. This isn't easy, because, one, NDG is huge, two, some people don't put there recycling bins out, and three, we have to document all of this to the city. Meaning we have a list of all the recycling bin serial numbers and every time the bin get stickered, we cross it off. Simple enough until you sticker a bin in an area full of serial numbers 21000 and you get a 34000, how did you get here? It's not on the paper. Or you see a bin way over in someones backyard, you can only see the top because the rest is covered in snow. How are you gonna get that one? Or better yet, you put the sticker on someones bin and they demand you get off they're property, woops, guess not everyone likes free sticker as much as I do. The worst is when they see you and ask why, why are you putting stickers on my recycling bin. Even if you explain how the manufacturer was supposed to mark the bins with the recycling symbol, they still fail to see the importance of the recycling symbol. However for me, I enjoy going out "to do stickers" because it give me a feel for the neighbourhood, I can navigate by street names and I'll never be lost in NDG.

Finalement, there's the  recycling workshops with the kids at the local schools, this is really fun. We pack up all kind of recycling information and games and head over to one of the many schools in NDG. Guilietta is the master of these presentations, she's a teacher so she's quite captivating in her speech. We often play this game when Guilietta introduces me "This is Niki, she's from British Columbia, and she came all this way to be here today! Does anyone know what country British Columbia is in?" Some of my favourite answers include "Quebec", "Europe", "United States", "Africa", "Toronto" and "Vancouver". This is in response to what country is British Columbia in. Another moment of similar hilarity is when Guilietta asked me to speak to one of the older grades about how we recycle in Vancouver. My speech went something like "Well, in Vancouver we have to separate our recycling! Which means you guys have one green bin, I have a blue bin, a blue bag, and a yellow bag!..." "...Where you guys get to put your recycling out the night before, I can't do that, because all the bears and raccoons will come and knock it over!" The whole purpose was to explain how lucky they are to be in a place with such simple recycling, and it must have worked because one of the boys in the front row raised his hand and said "Then why don't you just move to Quebec?". Awwwwww. It was particularly sweet because all the kids had autograph books and before I left they wanted my signature, so I had a line up of a dozen kids waiting for my autograph. Then that same little boy says to me "You are moving to Montreal, right? Because you should." I said "Well, I'm here for another month!" he says "Then you should probably just stay." So cute. Then there was the kindergarten class, when I got there I opened the door and was greeted by a room of kids who said in unison "BLUE HAIR!" so that was my nick name for the after noon. Apparently, you're not allowed to have dyed hair in schools here, I certainly wasn't frowned upon in the school, in fact most of the teachers liked my hair. I really like seeing the kids getting interested in recycling and the environment. Guilietta was telling me a story about when she ask the kids "What is the environment?" and a girl put up her hand and said "It's everything" and be it a broad answer, it's true. Then you hear these kids get really passionate about everything to do with the earth, you can see they really care. These kids won't become Bee-Watcher-Watchers, that's for sure.

In short, I enjoy my job here. I don't see how I could ever even apply at Pizza Hut now, not even as a joke. I guess I'll just have to start a Vancouver chapter of the Eco-Quartier!

Apathy is Boring is Anything but Boring

So it's been awhile and it would be almost impossible to give you a full catch up, for now the best I can offer is insight through little anecdotes here and there. Katimavik is like a soap opera, if you miss one episode you have missed a lot and subsequently you will be very lost. For instance, I'm not at the Katimahouse right now, the world is silent and I'm in a bed in my own room with a magestic bay window and a crown modeling decorates the chandeleer above. Yes, there's no way I'm anywhere near the Katimavik house. In fact no one is at the house right now. Not even our dear PL, Etienne. Everyone in my group has left for 9 days of billeting where we part ways to live life under a new family, with a new culture. Some will be as far a Laval, as for me, I'm at 15 minutes away from Jolicoeur station. If you recall the metro map the station in the sud-ouest are as follows:
Agrignon
Monk
Joliceour
Verdun
D'eglise
Lasalle
Charlevoix
Lionel-Groulx

Our Katimavik house is at Monk, so my new house is about a half hour walk, not bad at all. Those who are in Laval, they are looking at a 1+ metro ride, on a good day. So I feel quite fortunate.

 

Alors, this is probably the only picture I have of the magic, and it's not even mine. I give Cody credit for this snap of me at the "Apathy is Boring" conference. Last Friday we were thrown into this mess of getting up early and going to "Apathy is Boring" instead of work. Like us many of you are asking "What is 'Apathy is Boring'?" To be honest, even after attending I'm not 100% sure, so I'm going to give the Niki-definition. It appears to be an organization devoted to getting youth involved in politics and volunteering. You can see how this is appropriate for our 'Cultural Discovery and Civic Engagement Program'. The first part was an introduction to the program followed by some entertainment from local musicians. There were about 150 people there, mostly Concordia students, which is no surprise because the event was being held at Concordia University. There was also the Ville-Ray Katimavik group in attendance. We also had the option to sign up for two seminars, an am slot, and a pm slot. I had signed up to see the Canada World Youth presentation for my am, and for my pm there was a presentation on using symbolism in comic books and cartoons to portray a message. Some of the other workshops included YWCA, A few volunteer work shops, and even a Katimavik workshop, which seemed irrelevant to learn about Katimavik while on Katimavik.

The Canada World Youth presentation was really inspiring and I realized I didn't know as much as I had though about the program. It has so much in common with Katimavik it's like comparing the black squares on a checker board, to the red squares on the same board. Same share, same size, but opposite. Similar to Katimavik, they offer a 6 month program, however it's 3 months in Canada, then 3 months over seas. Where we live in a group of 10, they live in a group of 20. Not to say they actually live in a group, they stay with host families for the rotation and then for one week in the middle of the rotation they live altogether in one house. Of course we do the opposite. It certainly raised my interest in the program, and it felt great to know I'm already signed up.

The other workshop I attended was called "The Big Step" or "Le Grand Pas", and they are and organization that distributes comic books to caution kids from gang life. Originally I would call this idea far fetched, but here that's not the case, gangs, violence, drugs and tagging are a huge problem in Montreal. What better way to reach out to kids then with comic books. We saw symbols used in comics and cartoons to hint at secret societies, rascism and sexism. So why not turn artist power into a good message, which was where The Big Steps comes in. They hire writers and artists to create comic book to distribute to kids that gives only an undertone of a good message, as to not scare them away.

To wrap up they ask all of us to answer one of three questions and to then submit your answer to the back of the room. I answered the second question (which was in my opinion the easiest) "How do we get youth involved as citizens?" I  gave a simple answer "We are a motivated generation, it's in our nature to want to help, the struggle is how to get the message to us. That's why showcases like Apathy is Boring work so well in connection people with projects". Now either these were randomly drawn, or they liked my answers because they picked ten people to read out they're answers, four of these ten were from our Katimavik group (0 from Ville-Ray). So Myself, Francois, Andrew and Cody were asked to speak regarding our answers. Now I'm not all too nervous about speaking infront of people, but one of the 150+ people happened to be a political hero of mine, yes, herself Michaelle Jean, the greatest Govener General to ever grace our nation. This a was more than a treat, Michaelle Jean listened to me speak. Of course I got to listen to her speak (even in both languages she is captivating), which is special, but it's not like when you go to a concert, because Neil Young isn't gonna ask me to play for him once he's finished his set (a girl can dream). Afterwards Cody, Val, Andrew, and I waited around for her, and everyone in the auditorium was attempting to speak with her. They all budged in front of us, but we were patient, and just as they were attempting to get her out of there, she turned to us, and I found the words to offer my hand and say "What an honour it is to just shake the hand of one of the most inspiring political representatives of this time." I must of said something right because after that hand shake I got a hug from her, I would later retell this story about 1000 times with a smile on my face. She joked with the Katimavik kids and we got her e-mail because she mentioned she wanted to keep in contact. Wow, right? First the mayor, then Michaelle Jean, how could this get any better?! Stephen Harper (not that he's better, just that he's interesting, like road rash)? Or will they resurrect Wilfrid Laurier?! Who knows?!! Life just keeps getting better here on Katimavik.

After the most meaningful hug of a life time Cody and I went upstairs to mooch some fancy foods from the after party. Riding the high of what will be a page in my book of "Unforgettable Moments", we went to go get a free key chain from this one table. When we got there we quickly found out this table was giving out wine and wine key chains, so acting all cool and collected we walked away with a key chain and a fancy glass of wine. As I was sipping my wine and drooling over fancy food at this political gathering I first thought to myself "Can you believe tat all these people are falling for this? They all think I'm mature! HA! They don't even know about all the Pokemon cards I have back home!" Then I looked around and I thought again "Maybe being mature doesn't mean abandoning childhood so much as in means accepting responsibility. Know me like I know me, if there's two options I'll always take both." At this moment a waitress walked by with curried potatoes and prosciutto wrapped asparagus, I happily took both.

The next day was early to rise for half the group to adventure of the the Biodome for the Seedy Weekend with Kyles workplace: Action Communitaire! The event was for local horticulture and agriculture enthusiasts to buy and sell seeds, while Action Communitaire sells fair trade coffee and sandwich to buy seeds for the spring gardening projects. This was quite fun, Marie-France, and Jessica worked to serve the coffee at the front. While the Anglophones, Cody, Andrew and myself worked behind the scenes making sandwiches. Kyle buzzed around making sure everything was going according to plan because he had put a lot of effort in to the project. We had plenty of time to run around, look at the gardens, inspect the seeds, drink coffee and snack on sandwiches.

Typical moments in the kitchen consisted of talking about cheese, eating cheese, singing, laughing, dancing, saying 'Yagel Bagel' in a variety of ways, discussing more ways to acquire a sandwich for free, convincing Andrew to stop being a vegetarian by talking about sweet sweet prosciutto, taking pictures, cutting buns, commenting on the hot buns, fantasizing about the cheese, pretending we speak french, drooling, constantly washing our hands, arguing about the best way to tye an apron, making a mess, and of course "sandwiches are beautiful, sandwiches are fine, I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time, I eat the for my breakfast and I eat them for my lunch, if I had a hundred sandwiches I'd eat them all at once!"

On Sunday Cody, Jessica, Andrew, Marie-France, and I had the whole day off as the other crew took over. During this time we bought a few cheap clothes at the Value Village. That night we had a brief CCK and moved on with life.

On Monday we had a romantic Valentines day dinner with candles and heart shaped cookies, of course, what is romantic about ten people a table trying to extinguish the candles with there tongue? Yeah. This was also a land mark event, the temperature burst past 0 degrees and it rained! Wow! For the first time I saw it rain in Montreal, cool.

Tuesday we had a trip to the swimming pool, first we went to the wrong one, but eventually we found a Free Swimming Pool. But there's always a catch, no hot tub, just lanes, one pool, just lanes, there's a slide you can't use, just lanes, there's a diving board you can't use, just lanes, and apparently if your hair is too long they'll demand you tie it up. So you guessed it, the lifeguards HATED us. We made the most of it, after all, it was free!

On Wednesday I started to feel sick, and by the evening French activity I was sure the next day would be my sick day.

Thursday: My sick day. It was also the evening of Etienne's evaluation, where we get to tell the Project Coordinator, Julie, everything we like and dislike about Etienne. It was really funny that we had such a difficult time with coming up with any negative comments.

Friday, I wasn't feeling any better so by Katimavik rules if I needed to take another sick day, I had to go to the clinic. At 9:45am I put my name in, and by 1:45 I was served, luckily for me the clinic is a five minute walk from our house, so I waited at home. Of course the doctor told me what I already knew, drink fluids, sleep, don't work too hard, have some pain killers, no surprises. That night was also my first night in billeting, which was a much needed break for a sick girl like me. In fact, I might just have a nap, right now.

Oh the Enjoyment!

Hello again! I figured I'd do my very best to give a summary of the week, however I figured that on Sunday, while the internet was down. Interesting thing about a house of teenagers with access to the internet: It won't work. Our 20 gigabyte limit was slaughtered early on and we had limited access to the wireless, so boohoo. The other downside to attempting to make a post is that the only possible time to do this is when there's nothing else to do, so see the title, there's no time.  Today, today I was lucky and I got off work early enough that there isn't too much going on. So here is the week wrap up with the best of the best pictures.

 

 You may have heard about our blinding snow storm of awesomeness, well there it is. It was supposed to snow for three days, but it only snowed for one day. But don't be unimpressed, it dumped three days worth of snow in one day, it was pretty snowy. I actually witnessed several convoys of snow disposal trucks working like The Justice League of America. They had big plows for the road, little plows for the road, salt trucks, snow blowers, a dump truck to collect and remove, and a tiny little snow plow for the side walk.

 Oh Saturday! This was a great day, I would say "The greatest", but surely someone would correct me. This was my eggs "Ben et Benadictine", why was it called that? I don't quite know.

More from Saturday, this was Fete de Neige, where Montrealers celebrate the same thing they complain about: snow!

 Me and my new hobby, carving ice. I made a bear. This was incredibly fun. I only wish there was slush carving so I could have something to do in Vancouver.

On Sunday we took a quick art tour, one of the places we stopped at was a curio shop with retro stuff and alternative art. This picture of the wall pretty much sums up the mesmerizing obscurity. I brought some cool stuff I might talk about later.

For those of you wondering about our new addition, she is awesome. There it is.